Lawyer on trial for sexual assault takes witness stand

Steve SchmadekeTribune reporter

A real estate attorney on trial on charges he sexually assaulted a woman in her Gold Coast hotel room denied on the witness stand Wednesday that he coated his hands with lip balm after his arrest to thwart investigators, saying he was only cleaning up after using a dirty police station bathroom.

Anthony Bergamino Jr., 51, told jurors he’s the “son of a germophobe” and opted to use his tube of Carmex to clean his hands after using a Near North District police station bathroom because there was no soap, hand towels or water available.

“I know it’s an anti-microbial,” said Bergamino, who liberally applied Carmex to his lips before taking the stand.

“That was my only option,” he said when pressed by a Cook County prosecutor on cross-examination.

Bergamino was arrested moments after a Minnesota woman, 24, reported that she was sexually assaulted in her 31st-floor room at the W Chicago Lakeshore Hotel by an unknown man who entered her room early on Aug. 7, 2012. She had left the door propped open for a male friend.

Prosecutors allege that Bergamino, who lived in a condominium building next door to the hotel, took advantage of the fact that the woman left her hotel door propped open for a male friend, sexually assaulting her in the room.

But Bergamino testified he met the woman earlier that night when he made a self-deprecating joke after tripping over a “construction barricade” as the two walked near each other on Ontario Street. They talked for a few more minutes, he testified, and she gave him her room number after he told her his apartment number.

He went to a pub and drank three scotches and a beer, said Bergamino, who admitted he was drunk when he knocked on the door at the woman’s hotel room.

“She opened the door, said ‘Hi’ and led me in,” Bergamino testified. He said they kissed and touched on a bed but did not have sex.

Bergamino denied forcing himself on the woman.

“No, nothing of that sort at all. It was a very consensual engagement, interaction,” he testified.

Bergamino said the two stopped when the woman told him her friend was coming to the room. Bergamino said he went downstairs, sat in a rocking chair to gather his thoughts and decided to go back upstairs to invite the woman to his apartment.

A police officer has testified he saw Bergamino in the hallway outside the woman’s room and arrested him after she identified him as her attacker.

At the Near North district station, Bergamino refused to allow a police technician swab his hands for potential DNA evidence, prosecutors said. Bergamino’s DNA was found on swabs taken from the woman’s mouth and chest, according to trial testimony.

The woman declined to have swabs taken of her vaginal area, according to testimony.

Bergamino testified he graduated from the University of Chicago law school in 1988 and was working as a real-estate investor before his arrest. He’s since opened a “small restaurant” because “I can’t do any more acquisitions now since the arrest,” he said.